rMBP Poor Battery Life

I've had my rMBP for a week now. Most everything is great. However, unless I got a defective one, there is no way the battery will ever make 7 hours. I'd like to know if any rMBP owners are experiencing the problems I have:

I have the display set at the highest retina resolution, at 50% brightness. Even with these settings, and what should be mediocre CPU tasking (browser, email, editor, and calendar open), the fans run constantly, and the machine is very warm. The battery itself may be fine, but with the fans running as they do, I get 2.5-3 hours max from a full charge.

I have yet to call Apple, but if they tell me that I can't set the resolution to the highest and still get close to the promised 7-hour battery life, then for me that pretty much defeats the major advantage of the rMBP.

From Apple's site, the small print about battery life states, "Testing conducted by Apple in May 2012 using preproduction 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro units. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 50%."

Are you running a VM? Parallels is not friend for battery life for me with my MBA. Also, take a look at your activity monitor as whenever I have the fans cranking like that, something is pegging the CPU. I had an issue with iCloud going nuts and taking all my CPU cycles.

I have the display set at the highest retina resolution, at 50% brightness. Even with these settings, and what should be mediocre CPU tasking (browser, email, editor, and calendar open), the fans run constantly, and the machine is very warm.

Yeah, agreed that doesn't sound quite right. Anand's rMBP review took (as always) a good look at battery life under various conditions, take a look at that page. Particularly it's worth noting that the state of the dGPU makes a big, big difference. Even in light usage, it can alter battery life by a few hours, and I think that the automatic switching is probably one of the weakest parts of Mac OS X in mobile usage right now. Certain applications that really have zero need seem to trigger the dGPU even when just sitting idle in the background. While that should be something you don't need to worry about, right now it may be worth using one of the various utilities around to keep an eye on what the dGPU is up to and what is triggering it. That could be your problem (or some runaway process, check for that too).

While software is the most likely culprit though it may just be that you got a lemon. It happens, and if you check software and see nothing don't hesitate to complain to Apple about it and see about getting a replacement.

I'd check Activity Monitor as well. The fans shouldn't be spinning all the time if it's idling. Something is probably eating CPU cycles, 80-100% CPU utilization would give you around 2-3 hours probably.

I only get the fans running audibly and the machine getting warm if I'm gaming or maybe with Adobe Flash running. Your experience of the fans blowing loudly using regular apps and browsing does not match my experience at all, unless maybe if you're browsing Flash-ridden sites.

You can check the current rate of power usage over time with 'pmset -g rawlog' in Terminal. Look for processes using a lot of CPU in Activity Monitor, or using the disk a lot using 'sudo fs_usage -f filesys'.

Well, I was surprised to find the 'Dock' consuming 90% CPU. I know some of you are thinking I have either Parallels or Fusion running, but I have neither even installed.

I closed every program, and then deleted my Dock Preferences plist and rebooted, but the Dock is still chewing up 90%.

Thanks for the help... no other process is even close, so it seems I have some software problem. Since I have not installed anything unusual, I will end up calling Apple to see if they can help troubleshoot. I'll update this thread if I find the culprit.

Create a new user account and log into that instead of your main user, see what happens.

That wouldn't work. We had several customers who migrated from a previous Mac and still get issues with a brand new account. The only workaround is to do a clean OS X install and they're happy afterward.

OP: You should seriously consider a clean install if you haven't. You can do a clone now and then test a clean install, if it doesn't help, you can go back to the clone to find something else instead.

Also, be sure to let the battery drain all the way down and then charge it full, that might help.

Well, I was surprised to find the 'Dock' consuming 90% CPU. I know some of you are thinking I have either Parallels or Fusion running, but I have neither even installed.

I closed every program, and then deleted my Dock Preferences plist and rebooted, but the Dock is still chewing up 90%.

Thanks for the help... no other process is even close, so it seems I have some software problem. Since I have not installed anything unusual, I will end up calling Apple to see if they can help troubleshoot. I'll update this thread if I find the culprit.

Oh. I know what's wrong. Change your desktop background once to a new picture , then log out and reboot. Once you log back in, things should be better. you can select the old photo again if you want.

I took mine off the plug for the first time today, it drained healthily with the brightness up (I was outside) and plenty of applications running, but still quoted 3.5 hours for a 60% charge. I was on it for a decent chunk of the day and it just got below 25% before I plugged it back in.

Nothing like an iPad (which is all I have to compare it too, first time notebook owner), but pretty accommodating.

Create a new user account and log into that instead of your main user, see what happens.

That wouldn't work. We had several customers who migrated from a previous Mac and still get issues with a brand new account. The only workaround is to do a clean OS X install and they're happy afterward.

Just because it doesn't always work, doesn't mean it's a worthless troubleshooting step (if it goes away with a new user, it's probably something in the per-user Library). No need to nuke and pave at the slightest provocation, especially since making a new user takes a few minutes max

Turns out that Apple has already received complaints about this problem, and is currently working on a solution.

For you folks, what I can tell you is:1. If I kill the Dock, upon relaunch it is fine. However, on boot, the Dock always pegs the CPU to 90%2. I created a temp user, and kept the default settings and configuration. As the temp user, the Dock behaves normally.3. I removed my entire user Cache, and all Dock plist file in the user Library, but the Dock still misbehaves after that and a reboot.4. Since I removed my Dock preferences, the Dock is now back to default config, and it still pegs the CPU.5. This was a clean factory install. I did not restore from a TM backup, or do any other migration.6. The Apple tech rep told me they have seen this problem on a few new architectures, but he would not be very specific (no surprise there).

So for now, the band-aid is to kill the Dock as soon as I boot, and when it relaunches it is fine. It seems obvious that something I did in the configuration was the trigger, but I did nothing unusual, so hopefully Apple will figure out the problem and release a patch soon.I'll let ya know if I learn anything more.

Turns out that Apple has already received complaints about this problem, and is currently working on a solution.

For you folks, what I can tell you is:1. If I kill the Dock, upon relaunch it is fine. However, on boot, the Dock always pegs the CPU to 90%2. I created a temp user, and kept the default settings and configuration. As the temp user, the Dock behaves normally.3. I removed my entire user Cache, and all Dock plist file in the user Library, but the Dock still misbehaves after that and a reboot.4. Since I removed my Dock preferences, the Dock is now back to default config, and it still pegs the CPU.5. This was a clean factory install. I did not restore from a TM backup, or do any other migration.6. The Apple tech rep told me they have seen this problem on a few new architectures, but he would not be very specific (no surprise there).

So for now, the band-aid is to kill the Dock as soon as I boot, and when it relaunches it is fine. It seems obvious that something I did in the configuration was the trigger, but I did nothing unusual, so hopefully Apple will figure out the problem and release a patch soon.I'll let ya know if I learn anything more.